Mike Arrington, as always, seems to have the early scoop on the paid postings wars: PayPerPost is going to introduce a widget that bloggers can put on their blogs so that they can announce it is available for paid postings, where PayPerPost will act as an intermediary and only take a 10% cut of the deal.

As Mike Arrington rightly says, this is a change in how PayPerPost kind of does things: whereas Advertisers would set their price per post and have bloggers come to *them*, bloggers can now set their own price, and have advertisers come to them.

This sort of takes aim at ReviewMe, which tries to create a market of bloggers that advertisers can choose from — but undercuts ReviewMe, as it only takes a 10%, as opposed to a 50%, share of the profits.

I say “sort of”, because we don’t yet know if PayPerPost will actually create a searchable database/ marketplace of bloggers much like ReviewMe has.

So — what will this all mean?

Well, Allen from CenterNetworks wonders why someone shouldn’t eliminate the middleman (PayPerPost) altogether and just sell posts on his or her own, all the while wondering when an advertorial company will surface.

Mike Arrington gives away his usual sentiments by titling his post “How Much Is Your Soul Worth”, because PPP doesn’t require you to do a post-level disclosure and it does allow advertisers to demand that its posts be positive.

Personally, I think there are two things that are worth remembering:

1. Paid Postings Are An SEO Tool: From a search engine optimization (SEO) point of view, Pay Per Post and ReviewMe must be absolute solid gold. Sure, when you think PPP you might be thinking of it as a tool in terms of “traffic” or “buzz” — which are all true to an extent. But thought of another way, these kinds of services are allowing advertisers to pay for inbound links that exist in an organic context — the kind of context that Google LOVES. Begging for links has gone the way of the Do Do.

Paid postings allow advertisers to pay blogs for inbound links to improve their SERPs. If you want proof that this is *exactly* how PPP views itself, look no further than the video explaining PPP’s widget. About half way through the video, it explains how advertisers may pay for a post, and it can specify *exactly* what URL that the blogger should use AND the anchor text.

The *only* reason why this is here is so that advertisers can get exactly what they want: higher SERPs (and pagerank) for a given keyword. Google may or may not have an official policy on this, and it may change in the future, but for people with pockets, this must be a legitimate strategy that is kind of awesome in a Machiavellian way.

2. Disclosure Doesn’t Matter — Paid Postings Will Always Be A Little Evil: So, paid postings are a SERP tool, right? Well, even the most mercenary SEO specialist would get a little antsy if *every* single post from a given blogger was negative or critical. Or, they might be a little less antsy if some posts were a little more positive. Or — they might be elated if they found bloggers who were generally positive all the time. In fact, they might get a good reputation for doing so, right?

And therein is a real-life ethical dilemma for bloggers that has NOTHING to do with disclosure. While you can write all the “balanced” reviews or posts that you want (its the “right” thing to do, right?), its actually in no blogger’s interest to write honestly critical reviews *all* the time. And by critical I don’t mean “I’m going to slam the hell out of this advertiser”.

Let’s put it another way: if a blogger were to accept every single offer that comes on his table, there’s be there fair share of crapulent ones. And you’d have to say “these do smell like crap — verily, they *are* crap”. Well, if bloggers *did* that sort of thing, then they would be compromising their future ability to get paid to do sponsored posts in the future.

In fact, its in their best interests to write posts that give the appearance of being balanced (therefore appeasing their audience, PPP, and the advertiser) — but overall being positive.

It *isn’t* their best interests to write honestly critical posts because it endangers future profits.

From an ethical point of view (if ethics bother you — and I acknowledge that for some, it might not as much) it doesn’t really matter if there is in-post disclosure, or there is disclosure at all, because there is a more insidious factor at work that affects the content of your post — the potential for future work.

Bottom line: Paid postings are here to stay. I’ve said this more than once, and I’ll bang the drum until the cows come home. And the reason for this is that there is a demand on both sides that is predicated by how powerful blogs are both as a tool to start and perpetuate traffic / buzz, but also how important they are from an SEO point of view.

There are advertisers who are happy to pay for it — and more importantly, there are certain bloggers who are happy to be paid *to do it*.

There is an ethical price to pay and it goes beyond disclosing whether a post is paid or not. But, as I’ve also said, some bloggers may not have the luxury of debating those ethics all the time as well.